Sample Sources
The sources below are those contained in our three curated collections—covering themes of Passover, Gender Roles, and Holocaust Resistance. They represent a fraction of the thousands of sources that will be available when the full site launches in 2024.
The Jewish Problem: How to Solve It
Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with Patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent. A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also…
Interpolation of the Sokolover Rebbe
The [Babylonian] Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin [109b] brings a statement that when a stranger came to the city of Sodom, he would be placed on a bed. Someone who was taller than the bed would have his…
Opening Address of the Jewish Women’s Congress
It is my pleasant duty, as chairman of the local committee, to extend to you all a hearty welcome to our city and to our Congress, the first Jewish Women’s Congress. It was with some misgiving that I…
Lesser Ury (and Jewish Art)
The strongest testimony to life is productivity, and the most direct form of productivity is art. That is why those of us who announce a life of the Jewish people inquire into the possibility of…
Periodization of the Eras and the Evolution of the Generations
Rabbi Elhanan related:
“I once asked the Hafetz Chaim:
“Granted that we are accustomed to a division of eras in Jewish religious history—the Tannaitic era separately, and the Amoraic era separately…
Heine and the Consequences
But Heinrich Heine—even the aesthetes who are rescuing his immortality in an island publishing house (these gloriously impractical minds whose cerebral wrinkles trail away into ornament) have nothing…
The Sanctification of the Name
A passage in chapter 22 of the third Book of Moses was destined to become the starting point for one of the most peculiar religious concepts of the Jewish people. It reads: “Observe my laws and…
Women in the Synagogue
Duality manifests itself in all things, but in nothing is this two-foldness more plainly seen than in woman’s nature.
The weaker sex physically, it is the stronger spiritually, it having been said…
Poem
On Russian fields, in the twilights of winter!
Where can one be lonelier, Where can one be lonelier?
The doddering horse, the squeaking sleigh,
the path under snow—that is my way.
Below, in a…
Conversation with a Countryman
An old Jew asked me near the Jaffa Gate:
“Is the Saxon Garden still there? The same as ever?
Is there a fountain? At the entrance from Czysta Street
In the old days confectioners had a shop there…
With Gentle Fingers
With gentle fingers
The rain is softly
Playing sad melodies
On the black instrument of night.
We are sitting in the darkness,
Each in his own house
(The children have fallen asleep)
Listening…
Red Evenings
Into its own gold, the evening melted.
Bullet laughed midair across to bullet.
Colossal city fought with city, giants—
The sky disintegrated in red fragments.
Hatless, soldiers fly across the…